Northern Territory Senator Malarndirri McCarthy told a packed Kerferd Oration audience in Beechworth on Sunday that the dispossession and horrors to which First Peoples were subjected must be acknowledged if the country is to forge "a brave and bold and unified Australia".

The Labor parliamentarian gave a compelling speech to the 500-strong crowd about shared history and the steps being taken towards recognition of Australia's First Peoples by treaty or in the Constitution.

She also compared stories of her own people's enduring battle for recognition and survival with colonists' accounts of the ways in which First Peoples of the North East were regarded and how some of them faced vengeful retribution, as Beechworth historian Jacqui Durrant has recounted.

"It is a struggle," Senator McCarthy said, noting Dr Durrant's significant research.

"But when people stand as First Nations people to declare their sense of self and identity we all need to take a deep breath and pay much greater respect.

"You don't know the stories that people have travelled and struggled through to be the people that they are today - and that can be said of any Australian." Senator McCarthy said Australia's First Nations people who once owned local lands with their long-established laws and customs still exercised a strong traditional culture today.

But, as with many places in Australia, she said the colonisers had recorded Beechworth history - and their perspectives needed to be examined because Aboriginal voices had been silenced.

Senator McCarthy said truth-telling about Aboriginal stewardship, identity and local history needed to be embraced in the same way that Europeans recorded the stories and people of the 1850s gold rush, outlaw Ned Kelly, the ill-fated transcontinental explorer and former Ovens District police inspector Robert O'Hara Burke, and governor-general and High Court judge Sir Isaac Isaacs, who spent his formative years in Beechworth.

Beechworth clearly has witness to people and events that are matters of great national pride and unite us as a nation," she said.

But with First Nations voices missing from museums, galleries and libraries, and art and cultural objects taken by settlers and collectors, Aboriginal cultural knowledge had been nullified.

"This has created challenges for First Nations people to understand their families' histories," Senator McCarthy said.

She spoke of her own history and culture "buried deep in the land and waters in the Gulf of Carpentaria through which the MacArthur River snaked with its life-giving force in traditional lands".

Senator McCarthy spoke of the significance of ancestral song and dance and rituals which were First Nations title deeds to their country.

Song-lines passed from one generation to the next recounted these stories and lore and were road maps for First Peoples.

But Senator McCarthy said First Nations people continued to face significant challenges, with a higher number suffering chronic disease and imprisonment compared with other Australians.

She also spoke of enduring disappointment successive governments' timidity and failure to deliver recognition, citing the Barunga statement made 30 years ago by then prime minister Bob Hawke and the Uluru 'Statement of Heart' rejected by the current coalition government last year.

Yet she remarked on the historic steps shared by Victoria and the NT.

NT Chief Minister Michael Gunner on June 8, this year three decades after Mr Hawke signed the Barunga statement - signed with representatives of all four of the territory's Land Councils a memorandum of understanding to pursue a treaty between the NT government and First Peoples.

Legislation was passed by the Victorian parliament just days earlier to create a framework for treaty negotiations with FirstPeoples in Victoria.

Senator McCarthy said she was working with Cathy McGowan (MHR, Indi) on a Commonwealth joint parliamentary select committee examining 'Constitutional Recognition Relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples'.

The committee's interim report was released on Monday.

"I urge you to read the report on where we're moving as a country in Australia," Senator McCarthy said.

She said truth-telling about First Peoples' lives and their experiences of colonisation, frontier wars and dispossession was "a vital step along the path to true reconciliation".

"You can't have it without truth-telling - an item agenda in the (select committee's) interim report - and I believe all of Australia is ready for this and it can be done." Senator McCarthy said building relationships was the key to getting to know First Nations people and there would be opportunities for this in Indigo and the North East.

She said communities had only to look to their children, who wanted to learn language and interact, and often had more knowledge of First Nations culture than their parents.

"We have many school groups from southern Australia visiting the NT to spend time with First Nations children," she said.

Stanley's Wendy Lloyd Jones said every word from Senator McCarthy was so considered.

Albury's Amanda Prescott-Smith said Senator McCarthy's speech was a real insight into the work in progress for the First Nations people.

"I see a vision for a united Australia," she said.

Lorna and Richard Luke from Melbourne said building relationships with First Nations people and learning from them was significant.

First published in theWangaratta Chronicle 03 Aug 2018